The efficiency of heat dissipation is of crucial importance in the design of numerous pieces of electronic equipment, in particular when the electronic equipment includes electronic components presenting high energy density, and the electronic equipment needs to satisfy requirements for reducing weight and size.
The power dissipated per unit area inside such a piece of electronic equipment can be very large and can lead to a rise in temperature that can in turn lead to failure of the electronic components of the electronic equipment.
With reference to FIG. 1, this problem is particularly difficult to handle when electronic components presenting high energy density are involved, such as radiofrequency power amplifiers 1, which components are positioned inside a shielding cover 2 in order to isolate the radiofrequency power amplifiers 1 electromagnetically.
In order to remove the heat produced by the amplifiers 1, it is known to position a thermal pad on the amplifiers 1. Nevertheless, such a thermal pad is not electromagnetically transparent because its relative permittivity εr is greater than 1. Furthermore, the relatively large size of the thermal pad, which covers an area considerably larger than the area of the amplifiers 1 in order to compensate for drifts in the positioning of the thermal pad, runs the risk of leading to coupling between an input and an output of the circuit constituted by the amplifiers 1, thereby reducing the efficiency of said circuit.
It is also known to cool the amplifiers 1 by making use solely of the heat-dissipating capability of the electronic card 3 on which the amplifiers 1 are mounted. Heat is then removed by the base of each amplifier 1 to the electronic card 3. Nevertheless, the heat removed from any one amplifier 1 then contributes to heating the other amplifiers 1.
With reference to FIG. 2, it is also known to mount a dissipater with fins 5 on the top wall of the shielding cover 2.
Finally, it is known to make use of a fan in order to cool the shielding cover 2 and the amplifiers 1 present inside the shielding cover 2.